


"How come Starbucks isn't open on Thanksgiving?"

by alexiel_neesan



Category: DCU
Genre: M/M, Other, sick tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 17:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How come Starbucks isn't open on Thanksgiving?"</p><p>Written for <span><a href="http://the-protagonist.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://the-protagonist.dreamwidth.org/"><b>the_protagonist</b></a></span>  in a chat box in one hour. (make of that what you will)</p>
            </blockquote>





	"How come Starbucks isn't open on Thanksgiving?"

  
  
"How come Starbucks isn't open on Thanksgiving?" That voice, Tam knew it well. She heard it everyday, or almost everyday, because sometimes good little vigilantes did, well... what vigilantes usually did, and didn't come in to work. Hopefully Tim was sleeping on the other days he wasn't coming in at work.

"Good morning Tim," she said, not lifting her nose from the PDA she was busy opening Tim's meetings on.

"It's /Thanksgiving/, day where everyone is out and about, they'd be making gold if they were open on that day –I had to drive fifteen more minutes to find a coffee shop!"

"Poor you," she replied easily. "MacAdams rescheduled, you have no official meetings today, but the investors team for the whole park thing-you-know-which-one strongely worded their wanting to see you today–"

"Tam! I had to drive. On Thanksgiving. In the middle of Gotham."

Tim definitively sounded more... she couldn't very well call this whiny, even if it sounded like it, so she just lifted her head up -finally-. Tim looked like hell. Too pale, and his eyes too shiny, and he was doing a good impression of a feral sweater boy –something her roommate had showed her last night on the net– except for the feral look– Tim Drake-Draper Alvin never looked feral. Crazy, yes, and just rolled out of the bed, and hidden behind a cowl, and 'oh shit i'm bleeding out on your bed', and stupidely smitten, and annoyed, and pissed, but never feral. Today was still not a day for feral. Tim just looked sick, and ready to keel over, and was clutching at the paper cup –too big for him, even this early in the day, and _was he even supposed to drink coffee in his state_ – too hard.

She got up, went to him. "Tim, what's going on, what's wrong with you? You should be in bed!" She already knew he was going to ignore her, and answer with vague things, which he did.

"I swear I'm all right, Tam. I'm just... really pissed that it wasn't open. I just wanted coffee." Just wanted bad coffee when he had a machine she swore could fly on its own in his office, and she had seen Alfred bring it in himself. It was easier to approach him when he -finally there too- sat down in the ridiculously comfy couch in his office, the one they all pretended he did not use as a second bed (with all the uses that entailed, and she was really too embarrassed and kinda... no, let's stick to embarrassed, to use this one afternoon where he had used that couch for the other use a bed had).

"Can you at least tell me what's going on?" She hoped she'd get a window of oportunity to- there was someone to call, in those situations.

"I'm all right," he repeated, and stressed the words a bit too much. He had too many layers on, and she hadn't been paying enough attention to see if he was moving like he was injured, not that she could really tell in most cases.

"All right. Okay. I'll bring you the proposition from the board, then? And there is the thing they want for next week on your desk." She definitively had to call before he slipped out and did something Tim-like. (that one other monday where he had slipped out while sick to do something Tim-like was still fresh in her mind, and she had been assured by higher powers that he had been reminded of it. Several time. And that it wouldn't happen again. Obviously it hadn't been enough.) "I'll just... go back and finish my stuff, okay?" He nodded, already reading –at least the file was opened, she couldn't tell if he was actually reading– and she slipped out, closing the door behind her.

There was one –no, several numbers, in her phones, with absolutely innocent names, something no one would connect to anything bad, or interesting. She rang the second one in the list of uninteresting names, the one named "Peter" and nothing else. She sighed a little as it rang, sitting on her chair, staring at the pictures she had put there, and the odd and ends, and the files piling up -had no-one heard of no-paper filling, seriously.

"[ 'hat?]" answered the phone. Hearing how groggy the male on the other end sounded, Tam almost felt bad. Almost. She also stopped wondering how Tim had slipped himself out in his state.

"I hope you're all right, and that the call was just waking you up- your boyfriend is in here and he looks like hell." There was a string of muffled curses on the other end, muffled like by a pillow. "I'll do my best to keep him in here."

"[ 'hanks Tam. You're an angel, love.]" There were more noises, clothes rustling and thumps and more curses. "[ 'be there in ten.]"

"Make that fifteen. The streets are packed," and she disconnected the call.

***

She never heard him coming. Or felt him. Or anything, really, and he always managed to surprise her. So she jumped in her chair, and turned into the grinning face of Jason Peter Todd (Wayne, but he didn't like that). The grinning, bandaged face of Jason Peter Todd.

"Oh my god, what happened to you!"

"... should be 'what didn't happen to me'. Babybird in there?"

"Last I checked five minutes ago, yes. I don't think he moved from his spot." She covered the hand he had put on her desk with hers, slowly enough that he tracked the movement. "Jason... are you guys all right?"

"Hm?" He appeared surprised to see her hand on his, then his expression softened. "Don't worry about us, Tam. You got enough on your plate as it is."

She was going to smack them. Every last one of them, then force them to take a break, and feed them, and make them talk and /sleep/ for at least a week, starting with Jason. And Tim. Because they would be sleeping in the same bed anyway.

"Okay, wrong thing to say, please don't hit me, love." The grinning went crooked. "We good, just a bad night. Tim's on painkillers, and he gets a bit weird. 'Should have slept on him," and he turned his head away to the office, where Tim most hopefully still was.

She hit him with a rolled up newspaper in the arm. "Not good enough! It's not like any of you listen to me anyway. Go get your sick boyfriend, I'll make sure no-one gets in for as long as you need."

He smiled at her then, turning his hand to squeeze hers. Then he went in, the echo of his voice lingering after the door closed.

Jason was only like that with her. And with Tim.

Sometimes, she wondered... what it was like, what they had. Not that she was lonely, or anything, because she definitely wasn't. But... there was something more. She knew how they were, she knew many things, and she knew their secrets. They trusted her with them, and they allowed her to mother them.

Sometimes she just wanted to scream and tell them to stop. She knew they'd never stop. Never stop doing what they did, never stop being who they were.

That's why she loved them, after all.

/end


End file.
